Editor’s Note: Over the next several weeks, Points will feature blog posts, videos, and recaps from the Cannabis: Global Histories conference, which was held in Glasgow, Scotland, from April 19-20, 2018. Today, Dr. David A. Guba, Jr., professor at Bard Early College in Baltimore, Md., offers a recap of the event. Enjoy!

On April 19th and 20th, the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare (CSHHH) at the University of Strathclyde gathered scholars from around the world in unseasonably sunny Glasgow to attend the Cannabis: Global Histories conference and work toward the publication of an anthology on the “global histories of cannabis.” Masterfully organized by Dr. Lucas Richert, Dr. Jim Mills, and Ms. Caroline Marley, the conference provided one of the first opportunities for historians and scholars of cannabis to come together and discuss research that often flows into isolated disciplinary and regional channels. In addition to providing a more global view on cannabis’s modern history, the organizers also conceived of the conference as a means of facilitating conversation between scholars of cannabis and the general public. To help further this important outreach mission, the organizers have produced a series of blogs and vlogs from the conference, which will be featured over the next few weeks on Points.

Like this:

Editor’s note: Today sees the final installment of the Points tribute to AA historian Glenn C. Commentator Jackie B. graduated in 2002 with a degree in Theater and Performance Studies from U.C. Berkeley. Sober since 2006, she is the founder and Artistic Director of Recovery Works Theater (RWT) in San Francisco. Her work has been seen by tens of thousands of recovering alcoholics and addicts throughout the United States in a range of venues from convention centers and black box theaters to county jails. Rooted in rigorous research and a reverence for history, Jackie’s plays seek to create a living connection between the audience’s personal experience and the experiences of the early members and groups of Alcoholics Anonymous and other Twelve Step fellowships. Her most recent work, I Am Responsible, premiered in February 2017 in San Francisco.

In 2008, I began writing original plays about A.A. history, specifically created for performers and audiences in Twelve Step recovery. My interest in A.A. history was sparked when I was two years sober by a San Francisco old-timer during a Traditions study who shared a story about Joe McQ. of the Joe and Charlie Big Book study series. That’s how I learned that “Big Book” Joe, as he was called back home in Arkansas, was the first black man to get sober in A.A. in Little Rock. That was the night I learned about the lengths that many members had to go through to receive the same opportunity I had been so generously given, without question or demand, at my first A.A. meeting.

I was introduced to Glenn’s work while researching my first A.A. history play, In Our Own Words: Pioneers of Alcoholics Anonymous. Written in the documentary style of The Laramie Project, a tradition also known as verbatim theater, the dialogue was taken word for word from primary material, including A.A. speaker tapes, group histories, Grapevine stories and the book, Alcoholics Anonymous. The second half of the play was devoted to Third Tradition stories, stories like that of Joe McQ., and other marginalized people who paved a way inside the fellowship, creating a safe space for future members who identify as women, LGBTQ, young people and people of color.

I very much wanted to include the story of an early African-American woman in the program. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a single story from the 1940’s. Not in the Big Book or the Grapevine digital archives. Almost ready to admit defeat, I came across a mention of early black A.A. members in a 2005 book called The Factory Owner and the Convict: Vol. 1 of the Lives and Teachings of the A.A. Old-Timersby Glenn C. The text was originally written for local intergroups, to show how A.A. started in the cities and towns along the St. Joseph River, as it wound its way through Indiana and Michigan to the Great Lakes. Requests for copies came in from all around the country, and the author, a Professor of History and Religious Studies at Indiana University in South Bend, self-published it and made an excerpt available on www.hindsfoot.org. I eagerly ordered the book, and when it arrived I found a remarkable interview between Glenn and a black woman named Jimmy M., who got sober in A.A. in 1948. From that interview I was able to construct a monologue for Jimmy, creating one of the most powerful and revelatory scenes of In Our Own Words:

My little troupe of actors in recovery began to perform In Our Own Words outside of San Francisco. We traveled all over California. We performed in church sanctuaries, middle school auditoriums and jail pods. Over and over again, audience members would come up to me afterwards and thank me for sharing Joe and Jimmy’s stories, telling me that for the first time, they felt a part of A.A. history too. That was all made possible by Glenn’s dedicated and meticulous work. Finally, in 2010, we were given the opportunity to perform at a major international conference in San Antonio. I invited Glenn, reaching him through the AA History Lovers Yahoo Group. I didn’t know if he would make it, whether he would even get through the doors. The conference plays were so popular that year, the hotel had to shut down its elevators to keep more conventioneers from trying to get into the packed hall, far exceeding its maximum capacity. And still the conventioneers came, sneaking in through fire doors, climbing ten sets of stairs, and even stealing our set furniture from onstage to snag a seat.

After the performance, Glenn introduced himself. I wish I could remember more of that first face-to-face conversation. But I remember he hugged me and he hugged and took pictures with the lovely actress who played Jimmy. We exchanged numbers and emails and less than a week later, Glenn wrote to me, and that was the start of a seven-year friendship and mentorship that has shaped me as a thinker, writer and person in recovery.

When Glenn and his delightful wife Sue decided to winter in Fremont, California, my sponsee and I became regular guests at his new home. Anyone who has had the pleasure of spending one-on-one time with Glenn can attest to the mischievous delight he takes in the exchange of ideas and stories, everything from tidbits of oral history and classical literature, recovery wisdom and philosophical quandaries. Nestled deep in a cozy armchair, Glenn proved himself both an emphatic listener and a consummate teacher, insisting from the moment we first met in San Antonio that I am a historian.

In the foreword to my second play, a history of the Twelve Traditions called Our Experience Has Taught Us, Glenn described me as a historian of “the new generation.” For many years during our correspondence, I would counter that I was just a storyteller. Even as I began to do more rigorous primary research in archives around the country, I held back from calling myself a historian. I was a “history buff,” an A.A. history nerd. It wasn’t until I shared a stage with Glenn at the 2016 A.A. History Symposium at the Sedona Mago Retreat that I embraced the mantle of historian. Glenn C., who is arguably the most prolific writer of recovery history, generously shared his 45-minute presentation slot with a young female artist and scholar, as we shared the experiences of early gay, lesbians and people of color in A.A., including the stories of Jimmy M. and Joe McQ. It was a moment I will never forget; my journey with Glenn had come full circle. I will cherish every moment I have spent with Glenn, every email, every phone call, and every story. I could not be more proud to call him a mentor, a friend, and a fellow traveler on the broad highway.

Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes to you courtesy of Seth Blumenthal, a Lecturer at Boston University. Contact the author at sblument@bu.edu.

In 1994, the president of the Modern Language Association, Patricia Meyers Spacks, outlined the need to consider “So what?” in higher education. “We get a bad press these days … many believe that we too often devote our efforts to enterprises mattering only to ourselves,” Spacks warned. “Our research and writing, these critics appear convinced, possess even less value than our teaching. ‘So what?’ echoes loudly around us.”[1] Spacks then suggested a solution: “We must answer ‘So what?’ as a real rather than a rhetorical question.” This battle cry to co-opt the critics’ “So what?” applies to disciplines across the humanities that have suffered from a shift toward more focused and vocational training in college. Specifically, while making historical narratives compelling and relevant has always motivated historians’ research and teaching, this cause has become even more urgent with on-going decreases in student enrollment in history courses.

As a lecturer in Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences writing program, I have attempted to answer this call by teaching the first history course dedicated to cannabis in the United States, “Marijuana in American History.” This course attracts students from a wide array of fields in fulfillment of BU’s required two-semester writing and research sequence. For many students, especially those from disciplines outside of the humanities, taking a course that revolves around writing papers represents a trip to a foreign land. Thus, students’ dismissal of history writing as an arcane and niche enterprise reflects a wider protest that asks “So what?” in its most derisive context, analogous to its evil twin, “Who cares?” In 2007, 2.24 percent of college graduates majored in history, but only 2.02 percent in 2011.[2] In response, historians have initiated an emphasis on a new pedagogical approach to authentic historical problems or controversies that more accurately reflect the profession’s self-directed historical inquiry to establish an argument’s significance—the “so what?”

In my own teaching, making history relevant is a two pronged strategy. First, the subject, marijuana, is a popular topic that many students (mostly male) are curious about for a variety of reasons (some better than others). This course follows three eras of marijuana politics. First we cover the major controversies surrounding the Anslingerian prohibition years in the 1930s; next, we examine the war on drugs that began in the 1960s; and finally, we research the legalization era that began in the 1990s. The topic obviously provides a rich cultural history with a dizzying array of sources that engage students but also consider marijuana’s symbolic and political significance. For example, while reliable entertainment, comparing Reefer Madness, Easy Rider, Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke and Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High provides a fascinating window into Americans’ shifting sentiments about pot and the stoner from the 1930s to the 1980s. While the first two papers ask students to argue about the historical trends in marijuana culture, science and politics, the final assignment embraces the topic’s current controversy and asks students to develop an argument about the reason for the recent growing support for legalization. This assignment gives students free reign to choose their topics, as they write about issues such as marijuana culture and research in social media, women’s roles in the effort, the motivation for racial justice and of course the medicinal movement.

Second, this class shows history as controversy with contemporary implications rather than a list of dates and names. Students analyze political texts such as congressional testimony and Richard Nixon’s tapes to explore the complicated messages and cultural assumptions that informed our policies on drugs. Practicing these historical skills, students quickly learn that as soon as they can formulate a thesis, the “so what?” should also be included. Why does it matter if we scapegoat the first director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry J. Anslinger, for passing the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937? What lessons should we learn from following the rise and fall of the gateway theory? What does millennials’ overwhelming support for legalization say about this generation? All of these questions push students to make the connections between their scholarly argument and its current implications. Beyond the academic pursuit of marijuana history’s larger significance, my students can feel the topic’s controversy outside the classroom.

Soon, the class picked up wider publicity and critics predictably asked why something like this should pass as “college material.” One response to an article USA Today ran on “Marijuana in American History” expressed the abhorrence that many parents shared. “As a parent of a prospective student: STRIKE 1” read one typical reaction. “This is not something we are looking for in a future college.” As a new hire, I began to question my decision to offer the course. After checking with BU’s public relations office, however, I quickly realized that the positives greatly outweighed the negatives and they reassured me of the university’s support. In addition, students in my class found the controversy over their course flattering. One even expressed that she felt she was actually a part of history, while another engineering student reflected in his course portfolio, “At this time I think I have far greater perspective on the marijuana issue, but really what I think I got out of this course was a greater appreciation for how the whole ‘liberal arts college’[humanities?] thing can teach you how to think about issues.” In his paper, he argued that courses like “Marijuana in American History” are necessary, asking: “if marijuana has been legitimized in business, medicine and in politics-why not in academics?”—essentially developing a “so what?” that answered many critics who wondered “who cares”? (Or as one person protested: “And this course will prepare the student to do something?”). Despite the current hostility to the humanities, or perhaps because of it, the history of marijuana is a new and exciting field that can expand undergraduates’ notions of history’s role in changing perceptions of drugs and alcohol in society.

Editor’s Note: This post is brought to you by Camille Wilson, a patent attorney in Jacksonville, Florida, with extensive experience researching e-cigarettes. Enjoy!

Last January, in 2015, I[1] wrote about the patent evolution of e-cigarettes up until that point. I also made some general predictions about the e-cigarette industry, mostly favoring Big Tobacco. Only a short twenty months later, the entire landscape is about to change…and it will most likely favor Big Tobacco, in one way or another.

But why the shift?

In May 2016, the FDA finalized a rule (a very dense 134 page rule, to be exact) extending their regulatory power established by the Tobacco Control Act in 2007 to cover all tobacco products, which now includes e-cigarettes. That rule officially went into effect on August 8, 2016, starting the clock for the entire industry to disprove that their products are “not appropriate for the protection of public health.” (“Deeming Tobacco Products To Be Subject to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act”, as Amended by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act; Restrictions on the Sale and Distribution of Tobacco Products and Required Warning Statements for Tobacco Products, 81 Fed. Reg. 28975, May 10, 2016) (Amending 21 C.F.R. §§ 1100, 1140, and 1143). I use the term “disprove” because the entire rule seems to presume that all e-cigarette products do not protect public health; so, the onus is placed on the manufacturers to prove otherwise.

Editor’s Note: This post is brought to you by Miriam Kingsberg, an assistant professor in the department of history at the University of Colorado, Boulder. This summer she visited the Deutsches Apotheken-Museum in Munich and has provided us with a review of its collections. All photos are courtesy of her as well. Enjoy!

During a two-month sojourn in Germany this summer, I eagerly anticipated a visit to Munich’s famed Beer and Octoberfest Museum—in the name of “research,” naturally. Less renowned than this hotspot and its many sister institutions, but equally relevant to historians of intoxicants, is the country’s sole attempt to reconstruct its pharmaceutical history: the Deutsches Apotheken-Museum (hereafter referred to as DAM), located since 1958 in the breathtaking Heidelberg Castle.

Editor’s Note: This conference summary is brought to you by David Korostyshevsky, a doctoral student in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Minnesota. He traveled to Dwight, Illinois, in mid-July to attend the ADHS off-year “I’ve Been to Dwight” conference, and has provided this account of his time there. Thanks David!

On July 14-18, 2016, a group of international alcohol and drug historians descended upon the village of Dwight, Illinois, for an ADHS off-year conference. Conference organizers selected Dwight because 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the closing of the Keeley Institute.

Founded by Leslie E. Keeley in 1879 (and operating until 1966), the Keeley Institute offered treatment options to patients with addiction, usually alcoholism, including Keeley’s Gold Cure. “I’ve Been to Dwight,” the conference title, references “a catchphrase” former Keeley Institute patients “used to explain their sobriety.”

To make it easier to read, this summary is organized thematically. You can see the full conference program here.

I live-tweeted the conference as @rndmhistorian under the hashtag #IBTD16. Also, Janet Olson, volunteer archivist at the Frances Willard Historical Association wrote a blog post about the conference.

Editor’s Note: This post is brought to you by Marco Ramos and Tess Lanzarotta. Ramos is an MD/Ph.D. candidate in the History of Science and Medicine program at Yale University focusing on the production and circulation of scientific knowledge during the Cold War in the global south. Lanzarotta is a Ph.D. candidate in the same department focusing on the ways that contemporary interactions between biomedical researchers and indigenous populations are shaped by their historical antecedents. This summer, Ramos and Lanzarotta taught a course on the history of drugs in the twentieth century and we’ve invited them to contribute to our “Teaching Points” series. Enjoy!

Over the course of five weeks this summer, we co-taught a course on “The History of Drugs in Twentieth-Century America.” As discussed in our earlier post, we decided to focus the course around historical processes of drug categorization, rather than on a single drug or class of drugs. We hoped that this approach would draw undergraduate students’ attention to the ways that systems of drug classification are and have been shaped by their historical contexts. In particular, we felt it was crucial to emphasize the ways that drug categories affect and are affected by the people who use and regulate drugs.

Part of the impetus for the course was our own sense that historical analysis makes a particularly useful tool for understanding contemporary dilemmas surrounding drug use and drug policy. Bearing that in mind, we structured our classroom discussions and course assignments to encourage students to draw lessons from the past and bring them to bear on the present. The class was a seminar format with sessions running for three hours, twice each week; we tried to break up this rather long classroom time by delivering short lectures, showing documentaries and television episodes, visiting the Yale Medical Historical Library and Yale Art Gallery, and by bringing in guest speakers who could share their perspectives and expertise.